CBS All Access’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand is getting its own series soundtrack and it’s one that will include “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?”, the fictional hit single that launched Larry Underwood’s (Jovan Adepo) doomed music career in the classic novel. According to Forbes, Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis’ score for the series will be available from Lakeshore Records on Friday, February 5th, and will feature a total of 46 tracks — including “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?”
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“Working on a score for a show of the magnitude and scope of The Stand was a daunting but exciting process, made all the more surreal by watching the events of 2020 unfold, as we holed up scoring a show about a pandemic during a pandemic,” the composers said in a joint statement. “But ultimately, The Stand is about much more than a pandemic, and composing and recording this score was an invigorating challenge that required us to draw from a wide musical palette in order to support the stories of everything from a society in collapse, the mayhem and murder of ‘New Vegas,’ and the hope surrounding fresh starts and new beginnings.”
Fans got their first taste of this interpretation of the song — which is a significant element of Larry’s story in King’s novel — in the most recent episode of the nine-episode limited series, “The Walk”. Performed by Durand Jones — who is also given a writing credit in the episode’s credits — “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” is playing in the casino when Larry along with Ray (Irene Bedard) and Glen (Greg Kinnear) are greeted by a horrifically transformed Nadine (Amber Heard) as Randall Flagg’s (Alexander Skarsgard) “guests”.
In King’s novel, the song is Larry’s breakout hit that gives him his first taste of success in the music industry and sends him into a decadent, drug-fuelled party existence until the reality of his debt and situation sends him fleeing back to his mother in New York so he can wait it out until his next check hits. Of course, his timing isn’t great as that happens to be when Captain Trips hits and wipes out the population, including his mother. In the CBS All Access adaptation, the song is never mentioned — viewers meet Larry in New York at the release for his album Pocket Savior — though the song did factor into the 1994 miniseries adaptation.
The full tracklisting for the soundtrack also may contain some spoilers for the final two episodes of the series — though fans of the book will recognize a few of the incidents alluded to, specifically Nadine’s fate — and also sheds some light on the much anticipated “coda” for the series. The finale episode of the adaptation is written by King himself and according to series executive producer Benjamin Cavell gives Frannie (Odessa Young) a chance to make her own stand — something the author has wanted to do for 30 years.
“He wrote a coda that is our ninth episode. It will be completely new to the entire audience,” Cavell said. “I can, and will say, the big reason he wanted to do the coda was, he was thinking about for [the past] 30 years that Frannie doesn’t go on ‘the stand’ in the book. She’s seven or eight months pregnant, and can’t walk across the mountains to face the Dark Man. It always ate at him that she was one of the heroes of the book, and she was never given her ‘stand.’ The coda is his planned attempt for the last 30-years to give her her ‘stand.’”
The first seven episodes of The Stand are now streaming on CBS All Access. New episodes arrive every Thursday. The Stand Original Soundtrack will be available on February 5th.
